One of his listed threats, dust, is a real concern. But here Burgess establishes a leitmotif for his solar indictment, blowing problems far out of proportion. "In 2009," Burgess writes in one anecdote, "Google found that after it cleaned its panels, energy doubled."

Here's what the Red, White, and Blue Whistle-blower left out.

"We have two different sets of solar panels on our [Mountain View, Calif.] campus," Google explained in its official blog,"completely flat ones installed on carports, and rooftop ones that are tilted." Washing doubled the output of the flat-mounted panels. But, the blog continued, "The rooftop solar panels are a different story. Our data indicates that rain does a sufficient job of cleaning the tilted solar panels ... So for now, we'll let Mother Nature take care of cleaning our rooftop panels."

Another fact Burgess fails to mention is that nearly all solar installations are tilted, primarily to capture the most sunlight. Owners of solar panels do need to maintain them for peak performance, but that's hardly a nasty little secret.